Chef Simon Gault recently put on lunch for a group of journalists at Charley Noble near Wellington's waterfront. But the former MasterChef judge wasn't to be seen in the kitchen, or anywhere near the restaurant for that matter. He was 600km away on the end of a video call from Auckland, dressed in his immaculate chef's whites and holding a tablet computer.
Tapping on it, he sent instructions in the bustling kitchen to a robotic arm, which used its tongs to pick up a crayfish tail sizzling on the grill and delicately place it on the fluffy white roll that was about to be served up to me.
Robo-Chop, as the robotic chef was nicknamed, is a bit of a gimmick. It's unlikely to be putting chefs out of work any time soon. The point of the demonstration, held by Samsung, Spark and robotics companies RML Machinery and ABB Robotics, was to celebrate the extension of Spark's 5G mobile network to cover most of Wellington's central business district.
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